PLASMA - Parallel Linear Algebra Software for Multicore Architectures

Parallel Linear Algebra for Scalable Multi-core Architectures (PLASMA) .

What is PLASMA?

The Parallel Linear Algebra for Scalable Multi-core Architectures (PLASMA) project aims to address the critical and highly disruptive situation that is facing the Linear Algebra and High Performance Computing community due to the introduction of multi-core architectures. The main purpose of PLASMA is to address the performance shortcomings of the LAPACK and ScaLAPACK libraries on multicore processors and multi-socket systems of multicore processors. PLASMA provides routines to solve dense general systems of linear equations, symmetric positive definite systems of linear equations and linear least squares problems, using LU, Cholesky, QR and LQ factorizations. Real arithmetic and complex arithmetic are supported in both single precision and double precision.

PLASMA has been designed to supercede LAPACK and ScaLAPACK, principally by restructuring the software to achieve much greater efficiency, where possible, on modern computers based on multicore processors. PLASMA also relies on new or improved algorithms. Currently, however, PLASMA does not serve as a complete replacement of LAPACK due to limited functionality. Specifically, PLASMA does not support band matrices and does not solve eigenvalue and singular value problems. Also, PLASMA does not replace ScaLAPACK as software for distributed memory computers, since it only supports shared-memory machines.

Installed Versions and Platforms

The most recent release of PLASMA is available on all HPC systems at LRZ.  The following module stack is supported:

module load plasma

and then compile or link your program using the Intel compilers

ifort $PLASMA_INC -o myprog.exe prog.f90 foo.o ... $PLASMA_LIB
icc $PLASMA_INC -o myprog.exe prog.c foo.o ... $PLASMA_LIB

It is necessary that PLASMA uses the serial version of MKL. Therfore by loading the module for PLASMA the OpenMP-parallel version of MKL is unload and the serial version is used.

Documentation and Support

In case of problems with the installation of this package on the LRZ systems please contact the Service Desk.